Travelogue 25 – July 13
13 Worms

My brother wrote to me, referring to one physicist’s theory that time is a series of independent moments, frozen universes we somehow move through. He says he has trouble believing it's true, and so do I. But it's a convenient metaphor for how life feels to me.

Our picture was in the paper Saturday, Leeza's and mine. The foundation had a fundraiser for the school the same night. The photo is one of several I was able to find for the reporter in the hard drive of my old Imac. It dates from our trip to Rome two years ago.

I ran the marathon on that trip. Now I can barely finish two miles. I jog Sunday morning, out along the Mississippi River, a piece of my old training course. It's early enough to avoid most of the weekend traffic, Midwestern city dwellers determined to find recreation. The sky is hazy, mottled, muggy. There's foam on the river's surface from the falls behind me. The high banks are that vivid shade of green that always seems impossible to my California sensibility. A group of well-fed, smiling people have gathered by a bit of grassy beach. Canoes are drawn up at their feet. A man whizzes by on his bicycle, coated in all the latest gear, looking like an android. The smiles go on.

Culture Shock wants to tell me this is a forlorn town. It has all the atmosphere of a twelve-step meeting -- coffee and donuts and fluorescent lighting on formica. What is man-made is so planned it tastes like chewed food. And the natural beauty is the brooding type of the plains. It lowers at you when you leave the house. It disdains any talk above a whisper. This is where she died.

You walk along the Mississippi River downtown. It's a melancholy weekday evening, cool for summer, still a bit cloudy. The peaceful surface reflects back the deepening blue of dusk. You stop to watch fish feeding on the myriad little water bugs. You see the fish tails; you see their mouths. Across the water; across the first, shallow drop of St. Anthony Falls, you see the trees of Nicollet Island, and the old brick buildings on the other shore that date to Minneapolis’s mill town past. It's quiet. There's not another soul along this new concrete promenade -- other than the cluster of rough-looking guys hiding out among some park trees. One of them is shouting about how he was knifed. You come to something inscribed into the sidewalk concrete: "Can you find 13 worms?" You ponder. Is this a conversation the city is having with its fishermen? Is it an academic puzzle, a kind of existential koan? Is it meant for kids? As you progress, you pass a series of bronze turtles and frogs placed on top of a short concrete border along the city side of the walkway. But where are the worms? The odd puzzle dissolves without any answer. The cloudy city’s existential riddle.

Culture Shock takes lots of walks.

But at night, we go out. One night, it's to Mannings, a classic American corner bar. A row of three tables between booths and bar. Beer and wine and grill, TVs in every corner. On one, we watch the Tour de France. On all the others, the trivia channel. You order a board, punch in your answers, and compete with bars across the country. We sit with Doug, a grey-beard with an enormous gut in a cardinal red T-shirt. It's seven, but his eyes are bleary; his voice is bleary. We sit with Joanie, small and plain, smoking and teasing. I can spot the moment she decides I'm gay and forgives me. While pitchers keep coming at an alarming rate, we play the game. I'm useful once or twice -- Parma is the only inland city among the list of European names -- but most of the questions are about TV shows and sports. I fall into a daze watching the riders, pink and blue and green, coasting through the rain in Brittany. Distantly, the question reverberates, 13 worms, 13 worms?

Travelogue 24 – July 8
Bikes and Clouds

It's raining. I carry it around with me like my shroud, this rain, wherever I go. Ethiopia or Minnesota, the sun will not shine on me. But I'll say this for Minnesota rain. It's soft and warm. It's the kind that won't deter you from getting on your bike for short trips.

Craig and I go to watch a band play outdoors at the university. His house is a few blocks from the university. I should explain a few things about Minnesota. First, there's the summer mania. When the snow melts in April, and the threat of snow melts in May; when the first buds open in May; when warm weather appears in June, Minnesotans become a bit giddy. They're running around in shorts as early as March, and by summer their eyes gleam like drunks'. The festivals begin. By July 4th, festivals are popping in the Twin Cities at a stellar rate, three or four per weekend -- parades, art festivals, outdoor stages, dances, shuttle launchings, what have you. It becomes distracting.

I have the good fortune of having in Craig the ultimate guide through the maze of activities. If it's cheap and interesting, Craig will be there. He has an uncanny sense for the best and the most fun.

We sit in the gentle drizzle in the plaza in front of the Northrop Auditorium. The band is nestled in among the massive Ionic pillars of the façade. It's a stately, huge building, about a hundred years old, part of the mall that forms the center of the original university. If you're trapped in Minneapolis, the mall is a worthy sight, -- classical, venerable, green -- something of the old respect we had for academia.

Blithely we sit among history and the drizzle, and we listen to a French tune almost fifty years old. Front and center is the accordion player. Behind the right pillar is a guitar player, and behind the left one is the violin/mandolin guy. And behind the audience is the soaked stage they were supposed to occupy. The musicians are unruffled. As I listen, I'm reminded of the virtuosity in this town. It's amazing the variety and depth of the talent here. In their one hour set, this band swings effortlessly through jazz and blues, old French pop and old American, adding a dash of their own flavor to everything, and playing superbly. I missed this while I was away. The rain-misery disappears for a while.

It didn't rain on July 4th. If I have any readers aren't familiar with this date, I should explain it's one of America's biggest holidays, -- Independence Day -- more beloved for its fireworks than for its significance. I gather with Josh and friends in Bryn Mawr park, a wide expanse of grass and baseball diamonds just outside of downtown. It's our tradition to play croquet, usually in a state of advanced inebriation. It's a glorious afternoon. The big clouds above are white and unthreatening.

If I were to recommend Minnesota as a tourist site, prominent in my recommendation would be the big summer clouds. There's something magnificent about them. Maybe it's the big sky here, the horizon being so flat. They have plenty of stage for their procession. Clouds like these are often compared to great ships. It makes perfect sense, with their stately movement across the blue sky, their massive hulls and sails. They lend themselves readily to long meditations. Their white billows pile upon each other intricately, and take on icy blues and dark grays, suggestive of the next thunderstorm. They're the soul of summer.

Underneath the flotilla, we take to the beers and the mallets. I actually win my game, without one sign of skill. I demonstrate the same lack of grace when we try a game of soccer. I'm excited because of my conversion to soccer overseas, and I run around like a fool, kicking wide every time. I'm immediately winded, and it's back to the clouds.

Biking is another pleasure I can recommend for this town. I pedal across town after the croquet, heading for Emily's house where we will sit while the crickets start up outside -- and then the booms and whistles of Independence Day. It's a long way from Bryn Mawr Park, but easy by bike because of the "Greenway": a railroad track converted into a bike path that cuts east-west across Minneapolis, starting up among the city lakes. I'm happy. You have to give credit to an American town that recognizes the sublime pleasure of the bicycle. It seems like I'm following the clouds as I go. Stately they may be, but they're making good time.

Travelogue 23 – July 3
Is It a Dream?

It's a Minnesota summer: hot and muggy. Fluffy clouds drift lazily, threatening an afternoon thunderstorm. I'm alone in the back of the taxi bearing me away from the airport. No yelling, no bargaining, no squeezing by others huddled together in the van seats. It's just me, and the taxi charges by the sixteenth of a mile. The driver makes his sleepy way down residential streets.

The city is spooky quiet. A few sleep-walkers are out, looking intent in their inscrutable purpose. The adults look like kids in their khaki shorts and neat, white sneakers. The teens prefer to play the part of zombies in their dark tatters and tattoos prematurely blurred. It doesn't play too well, though, in a town that looks like a miniature golf course.

The green carpets of house lawns are squared to the millimeter. The houses themselves flow by like stock background celluloid for a TV cartoon. Is this David Lynch or is it Warner Brothers? I'm not sure, but I struggle to awaken. Do people live here, or is it a quaalude retreat for the reality-challenged?

I'm dropped at Craig's, and we sit on the porch and catch up. We watch the clouds gather up the last daylight. We stare at the occasional jogger, whose back is erect and who turns perfect ninety-degree corners. Just as occasionally, an SUV guns its engine as it launches into our block.

I'm enjoying seeing the rabbits and squirrels again. They seem to manifest more purpose than the humans. A robin has built a nest above us inside the porch. She's jealously guarding her blue eggs there, flying in and eyeing us, then swooping away and scolding insistently from the lawn. BBQ and beers. The world seems almost right as the sky glows a dark, richer azure, and the mosquitoes collect for their feast. A long day's travel weighs everything in me into the deck chair.

The next day, I get the tires on my bike filled with air and I take a ride. It's what I most missed about this place, cycling around the clean, flat streets, crossing over the river and through this city's green and peaceful parks. It feels good to pedal, but again I feel as though I should stop and rub my eyes. There are cars downtown; they seem to be in a hurry. I see people emerging from offices; they appear serious. So why does everything seem so insubstantial? Movies set in America feel more real than America. The thousands of unemployed drifting along Addis Ababa's streets have more presence and project more purpose.

I stop at one of my old cafes, one of my most comfortable haunts before. I try to drink tea and write, but the tea doesn't taste right. The writing is trivial. The chairs are cushioned. The floor is carpeted. The walls are picturesque brick. The barista has thought too much about his hair. His T-shirt is tight to just the right degree. He wears cheap bracelets that he measured quite precisely for their effect. The loud banter with his co-worker is calculated to be frivolous. The music is clever and produced to sound unproduced; it's contrived to throw ironic light on contrivance. I'm distracted by trivia; it intrudes upon my mind like benign, popsicle-colored viruses that chatter meaninglessly.

I peer into the boxes of stuff I left behind. It's all a bit alien. This person collects kick-knacks! How did this happen? When I left America, I culled my possessions down to about twenty boxes. More than half of those contain only books. How did the knick-knacks get in here? I'll look again later. The Fourth is tomorrow; maybe I'll have recovered America-vision by the end of the day. It'll make sense on Independence Day.

Travelogue 22 – June 28
Despising Lavoro

“Odia la Guerra; Odia il Lavoro,” says the graffiti on the pizzeria wall across the mini piazza. I would translate this roughly, (and probably incorrectly,) as “Hate War; Hate Work.” It’s an airtight philosophy, and it fits pretty neatly into mine. I’d say I’m demonstrating it well this noon hour in Trastevere, Roma at my little cafe in the mini piazza. And when I say mini, I mean it. Five alleyways the width of a European car converge here, and I could toss my cappuccino cup across the space ahead without breaking the stricture of “Odia Il Lavoro”. I could do it underhanded -- though, actually, it looks like it might be uphill. The cobblestones look more like Pompei’s lava field than a roadway. The only level space is the manhole cover in the center of the square. A row of Vespas is parked by the yellow building. The cafe building behind me is crumbling mustard. The one across the road to my right was once russet before it contracted leprosy. There are laundry and ferns hanging over my head. Down the alley ahead, there are glimpses of high, red-tiled roofs, and below, a collection of carabinieri, gathered around their squad cars; they’ve been idle as long as I have. I think most of my readers know my capacity for idleness.

But why lavora? It’s noon. The sun reigns at the center of a marvelously blue sky, scorching, allowing no shade. Rome is in bloom, all green with cypress, pine, maple and palm, and rooftop gardens among the peach- and apricot- and squash-colored buildings. It’s abloom with bright sun and white skin. I somehow thought pink flesh would be distasteful after Africa, but it does have its sugary charm. It gathers by the ton at the Ostiense railway terminal, on its way to the beach. I find my will sorely tested when we arrive at my station, the one for Ostia Antica. The history-lover in me vanquishes the mortal aesthete, and I disembark to stroll the remains of ancient Rome’s port city. At first, it’s a relief from the cacophony of capitol cities: birdsong; dandelions and red poppies among the old flagstones rounded and spread by two thousand years of weather; ancient red brick, silent and decrepit underneath the grand, red-trunked pines; the peaceful, green Tiber rolling by. But morning advances toward noon, and the air seems a bit too white and rare, and I’m getting dizzy. When I left Ethiopia, I taunted friends there with all the sun I would soon be enjoying. If only they could see me now, ducking from shade to shade and fleeing to the shelter of the train station. In the evening, I admire my new red crown, glowing in corners exposed by the Ethiopian buzz cut. Today, indolence is king, under cafe table umbrellas.

Yesterday afternoon, I’m investigating a new neighborhood in the south of the city, research for the novel. I’m resting in a park set square in the middle of a dreary traffic hub among blocks of apartment buildings set up like dominoes. There are dusty trees; there is shade. Three old men share one bench. The rest are vacant. A trash can is overturned. I notice, halfway through my pizza, what the crowd of boys to my left is up to. On a clear bit of pavement, they’ve set up a long and convoluted track for their battery-powered race cars, which are about the size of one’s hand. They’re entranced by their buzzing little robots circling almost faster than the eye. A grey-haired man with a pipe joins in. Passing teens stop to watch. A touch of innocence in the urban scene: I’m struck again by the amiable nature of kids here. They’re loud and boisterous – and God knows, their sense of style became stunted some time around Reagan’s last memory – but fundamentally, they bear no one ill will. Generations mix naturally, without a bit of self-consciousness.

Someone shouts and I flinch. Ethiopia has added to my already considerable burden of complexes and neuroses. All the voices in the street are directed at me! Children want money. I turn away and shake my head “no”. I respond with “ow” to anything an Italian says to me. (It’s Amharic for “yes”.) They pause sadly and think, “Mama mia, these Americans are sensitive.”

Travelogue #21 – June 23
We Adore Our Customers

I'm having a macchiatto at the Open Door Cafe near Addis Ababa University while an afternoon shower threatens. Opposite me, along the aluminum wall of the patio is a painting, right on the metal. "We adore the customers," it says in white lettering that hovers inexplicably across a sunset sky over silhouetted mountains and a desert valley. Equally inexplicable are the huge wedding cake, cup of coffee, and assortment of fruits that figure in the landscape. Crossing one corner, like a black comet, is the silhouette of a strange, rootless palm tree. A team of Jungians couldn’t interpret this.

It's Friday night, and I decide at the last minute to run to the Hilton, where they have a program on Ethiopia's traditional musical instruments, hosted by the Alliance Francaise. I'm half an hour's walk away. I fight the tide of workers headed home. I take a wrong turn and end up opposite the Sheraton. I resign myself to having to resort to one of the "contract" taxis -- the small, individual ones. They always bilk me, and the negotiations are exhausting, so usually I avoid them. But time is running out. I call one, and I buy a handful of peanuts from one of the women crouching by the side of the road, selling them from their woven baskets, while I wait for the driver to pull around. Even she bilks me, for 12 cents. It's okay. I'm enjoying the sunset over the hills. The taxi is one of those Ladas that kind of shimmies in a sickly way, side to side. It's a little disconcerting on the winding roads in this part of town. We wobble into the Hilton grounds, and I run in to buy my ticket. Seated inside the auditorium, I realize I'm not in the mood. The program is running on Abasha time (indefinably late) and the people make me uneasy: French vacationers, white American kids that are too smart and well-groomed. I abandon the plan, and look for the bar. This week, because of the European Cup, I've become a sudden soccer enthusiast. I settle in for the game. The sexy young lady next to me starts a conversation. Being sexy is her profession, as it turns out. While she scouts the room and smiles coyly, we share a beer and laugh about it. She says she’s taking classes on the side so she can get a regular job. She’s bright, if I’m to judge by her English. When I ask how much she charges, (just for curiosity’s sake, I assure you,) she shrugs. “Sometimes, I need rent; sometimes I need tuition.” Beside her, the aged, fat Norwegian tamely cheers for Denmark. On my side, the Brits mock the Norwegian. They tell me things got out of hand last night during the English game. Go figure. I leave at halftime. My lady friend has had no business.

I’m looking through the last batch of pictures; the ones from Bahir Dar. You may recall I dropped my camera at the falls. The photos are funny. There’s a bright haze to everything, and scenes drop off on the side into orange light. There are strange yellow lines like sub-atomic particles colliding, and burning geometrical shapes. We subjects smile, faded and oblivious to the fireworks. I like these pictures. People laugh because of my preference for drugstore cameras, but it’s just for these effects. It makes photography fun. If I want the perfect snapshot, I buy a postcard. I’ve never seen a picture yet, bought or taken myself, that looks like what I saw, so why not have some fun with it?

I'm packing. That's why I stop to look over pics. It's time to head out of this particular dream. What's strangest about it, about this dreamscape, is how thoroughly I became accomodated. The shouts along the sidewalk as I pass; the stares; the beggar with withered legs bent behind his back; the crazy traffic that stops for cows; the twelve sturdy pop tunes that have played in every cafe, taxi, restaurant, and office since I arrived, (I never want to hear an American complain about "overplay" back home;) the blackouts mid-composition on the computer; the slimy streets lined with corrugated tin, behind which families huddle in bug-ridden rooms; it's all quite "normal" to me now. I reflect on the shock I felt in my first weeks, and wonder at the powerful adaptability human psyche. There's a beauty to the squalor, and even the irritations here have a certain charm. And now I close the chapter. Bring in the shamans, and read it for me.

Hey, if anyone out there is reading, keep checking. Jarvis continues.

Travelogue 20 – June 19
Shades of Haile

Ah, morning. The rain has cleared. Our habitual haze hangs over the town from a city burning its trash. The hills of downtown have a brown pall over them and the air has a faint, acrid stink of burning plastic. Workers rush by on the way to the power station down the road. Another set of workers lazily drive their aheya (donkeys) the other way.

My life is a series of meetings now as I prepare to leave. Much remains to be settled about the school. (See Fregenet link.) But I have my moments in between, and my luxuries. I stop by Fil Wuha for a shower. Here I should humbly offer to correct an earlier impression – that Addis Ababa has no downtown to speak of. Not entirely true. At the top of the hill that is the district of Piassa, Leeza’s family’s area, is City Hall, a large concrete complex with a clock tower on which it’s always 2:00. This tower is how I spot Piassa from my own neighborhood. Anyway, a broad boulevard, called Churchill Road, runs down the hill from City Hall and across a wide valley to what used to be the train station, (and is still called Lagar -- a bastardization of Le Gare.) Standing at one end or the other, you can see the whole span of the boulevard, and it can be quite striking, with the hills behind. Along this road is a sort of downtown. Its style seems vaguely 1960s Sunset Boulevard -- square concrete and flat, colored windows; concrete balconies; some California experiments in shape & color -- a circular building, some ugly textures, a few funky-primitive curves in a facade. And in between, squat, little souvenir shops, all selling the same things. Shop owners sit outside and shout at you. Pitiful mothers from the country, babies on their backs, and toddlers trained to beg swarm around you. "Father, father." It appears to me that the only contribution to town from the 70s is the imposing obelisk-like war monument in front of the Black Lion Hospital, complete with hammer and sickle and red star. It dates from Ethiopia’s socialist regime, now in its grave thirteen years. But it’s a far sight better than most of the 90s & 00s contributions out on the city’s fringes, where style means godawful pseudo-pseudo marble tiling.

About in the middle of Churchill Road, you turn onto a winding side road and head toward Fil Wuha, the historical hot springs I mentioned before. If you keep going, you emerge into a small pocket of beautiful cityscape. You might, for the span of half a kilometer, forget where you are. On one hill is the grand United Nations complex, housing the Economic Commission for Africa. Up the hill is the Hilton. On an adjacent hill is the famous Sheraton, a luxurious compound, a la Santa Fe, where world leaders sip champagne. Down the hill, a few more hotels. My favorite is the Ghion, where Abebaw, Leeza's cousin had his wedding reception. I like it because they cultivate a huge lawn and garden (for their bustling business in weddings,) and it is visible from the road. At the top of the hill, past the hotels is one of the old palace grounds, now occupied by Meles, our current leader. Another palace occupies a large bit of ground across from Fil Wuha. Between the Hilton and the U.N. complex is a broad avenue with an island down its whole length as wide as any street. The whole stretch of it has been bought by the owner of the Sheraton, and it is currently under construction to create more entertainment for the 1% of the population who can afford such things. Beauty has its price, and I have to admit I enjoy this corner of the city, in spite of its bad politics. Continue down the hill to the end of the road and you find yourself in Meskel Square. Meskel means cross. It used to be Revolution Square in the socialist years, and the grand leader of the day, Mengistu, made grand addresses there to enforced crowds. It’s a broad, dirt amphitheatre, and in the mornings, it’s the practice arena for runners, who have measured how many kilometers it is to run every level of seating.

It was last week I was walking along that connecting street to Fil Wuha, when I met Solomon, an old man modestly dressed. He seemed eager to talk to me. These days, I walk faster when someone is eager to talk to me. But he was persistent, and wasn’t asking for money. We were passing the lower palace of Haile Selassie, and he told me he met the emperor when he was a child, several times. It seems he was a student at Haile’s own elite school. The emperor would visit, pat heads and pass out fruit. At the end of the year, the number one student would receive a suit; the second a pair of British shoes. Solomon decries the state of affairs now. The kids today …

Travelogue #19 – June 14
It Never Rains in Ethiopia …

Whatever you call the season, it’s raining every afternoon. The clouds move in over the mountains, and for a couple hours, it comes down – sometimes in a downpour. The by-roads, particularly my own street, have become stretches of slime. The shoe-shine boys are making a mint.

But my business goes on. That includes the serious business of tourism, which I’ve neglected. Last week, I visited Lucy. She’s one of the dignitaries of this city, and there’s talk she may move to America for a while, so I wanted to see her on this trip. She’s a slight and frail old lady. If she ever stood, she would rise to a mere three and a half feet. But she can’t. Her muscles have withered away to nothing. In fact, there’s little left of her at all. Collect the fragments of bone and she would handily fit into my backpack. That’s what three and a half million years will do to you. All in all, I’d say she’s handled it well: the oldest pre-human skeleton in the world. She has some cousins upstairs in the National Museum, who left us more complete skulls. I wouldn’t say they flatter the original owners. The one for which they reconstructed flesh, hair, and eyeballs would win no beauty contest, even among chimps. Maybe Lucy found him irresistible. Even an Australopithecus has to be loved by someone. There was a time when Lucy was hailed as grandma to us all. She’s since been relegated to great-aunt: they’ve found some older ancestors, including a new Australopithecus not far from where Lucy was found, dating back four and a half million years. Auntie, proud in her glass case, boasts of being one of the first monkeys to walk erect. Ethiopia was one of the best schools for walking back in the day, being recently stripped of its jungle by the Great Rift and a change in climate. Grassland encourages height for seeing distances, and marathon endurance for traveling. By the way, the Abasha don't call her Lucy. They call her Dinknesh, which corresponds roughly with, "You're precious".

My other notable excursion was to Fil Wuha. As I’ve related in an earlier blog, Emperor Menelik settled himself and his court up on the mountain, Entoto, some time in the 1880s or so. Being a simple man and a warrior by heart, the settlement remained fairly spartan. It didn’t take long for his wife, Taito, to discover the hot springs down in the valley and to begin dreaming of an easier existence than living on the mountain. She set her mind on a new and more comfortable capitol. One day by the springs, she sighted a new blossom, (called Ade in Amharic – I still have to research what it is in English,) and she made a plan for the new city: New Flower, Addis Ababa. These springs still exist in the heart of the city, and are called Fil Wuha. In Haile Selassie’s day, it was built up as a series of public baths -- a natural destination for yours truly after a week with no water at home. You pay your fee at the gate to the complex, something just less than a dollar, and you head up the hill to the long buildings with rows of shower stalls. Give your ticket to the woman with the mop and she gives you a towel and a hotel-style bar of soap, and there you go. It felt wonderful, but then again, how could it not? Was it therapeutic? Absolutely. They have a physical therapy clinic on site. I asked a doctor for a tour, and he happily obliged. They have hydrotherapy and massage. I will be back. We had tea and we chatted a little in Spanish. He was trained in Cuba, naturally, during the socialist Derg regime.

Does a movie count as tourism? I attended my first one in Ethiopia last night – in fact, the first since I left home five and more months ago. The movie was something American, something I don’t believe was ever released back there, with subtitles in some mystery language. Nothing remotely East African. It was pleasant enough. My expectations were low, recalling the movie experience in Kuwait, where people mill about and chat, come and go, make calls. Once you’ve navigated the swarm of beggars and peddlars outside, and sweated for a while in the overcrowded lobby, waiting for the previous movie to end, you’re all right. It’s an old-fashioned, cavernous movie house with a big screen, and, aside from the almost continual clatter of overturned pop bottles, distraction is well-contained. There are three movie theatres in town that play foreign films, one that shows local ones. There’s no directory. You taxi around among them and make your choice. Afterward, it’s dark. The air is fresh with the rain just passed. You slide back into the muddy streets.

Travelogue #18 – June 9
Seizures

I’m back after a couple days convalescing. Addis Ababa and I have been sick. Every so often, my back seizes up with some kind of muscle spasm. And it seems that Addis has similar sorts of fits. It’s been about five days since we’ve had water at my place. There’s road construction down the road. (The amount of road construction here feels like one palpable link to my hometown, Minneapolis.) There have also been more power outages than usual. It happens regularly that whole sections of town go down. But it must be three times this week it’s gone out while I sit at my neighborhood evening hotel, the GG Royale. This is my favorite place to unwind lately. They have an outdoor terrace on the third floor where you can watch the sun set over the fields and hills of town. It’s very nice. When it gets cool, I go in for a beer and CNN … until the lights go out. Nobody bats an eye. Maybe it’s a seasonal thing. Rainy season approaches. That’s what they keep saying, though already it rains every afternoon. I’m counting the days until departure, to Roma, where it really is summer.

For about as long as the water’s been out, the phone at my internet place has been out. Every day, it’s “tomorrow”. This morning, they couldn’t even get the computers started. The closest they came was getting one of the power bars to flicker. “Okay,” they said. “Try.” I said, “Naga. (Tomorrow.)” So life grinds to a halt. Not that it was going so fast, anyway.

These back spasms are excruciating. I had motivation to experiment. I decided I would try the clinic across the street from GG. The name of this clinic is “Jest”, so I had my doubts. But the pain moved me -- I wouldn’t dare try a taxi in this state. The diagnostic procedure ran like this: I gripped my shoulder; they suggested a massage. It sounded good to me. So upstairs I went and undressed for the masseuse, another one of Ethiopia’s army of gorgeous ladies. If I was embarrassed, it wasn’t my scrawny body but the fact that I hadn’t bathed in days. I hoped she understood. I got the full-body massage, for about $7.00 – very nice. Except for the part where she dug into my shoulder muscles mercilessly, ignoring my writhing and cries of pain. “You will be free,” she kept repeating cryptically. In the end, I suppose I was. I had a few more degrees of motion in my neck, and I got to take a hot shower to rinse off the oil. That was my happiest moment. I was in a good mood as I crossed the street to have my beer and sit in the dark.

The next day, I returned for another treatment. “You will be free,” she said, and I said yes. I suffered through the ruthless clenching of my neck muscles, all the while dreaming of the hot shower to come. She’s chatty today. She tells me how she likes Americans. They leave good tips. I take the hint. She recited her mobile number for me, and I’m not sure how to interpret that. But I promise I’ll be back next week. A few more minutes and I’m free – to run to the shower. Yes, all is good is Addis, I think. Sophia and I sit in the dark at the hotel, and I list my woes for her amusement: no water, no internet. The landlord accosted me in the morning, asking for another month’s rent. I have to spend fifteen minutes with him counting until he realizes that from April to June is just two months, and I’ve paid for three. Sophia laughs: “These are problems?” I try to explain what neurotic means. This is new vocabulary in Ethiopia.

Travelogue #17 – June 4
The Hello Revolution

Anyway, I’ve been back in the big city for over a week now, and prey to big city problems. I’m sure my readers are familiar with this one: having to stay in a hotel because they arrived home after dark. That was my fate last night. Most housing is in compounds, and most have guards, but my landlord is too cheap to hire one. He locks up the gate himself. Therefore, I have a ten o’clock curfew. But time is funny in Ethiopia, as I’ve noted before. All clocks said nine thirty; the gate said ten. I get to visit my old friends at the Debre Damo Hotel. The silver lining is my first hot shower in months.

Yes, big city life goes on. When the loudspeakers are out at the church, the deacons pile into somebody’s car, probably a taxi, at 5 a.m. and cruise around the neighborhood honking the horn and calling us to prayer. The roosters take their cue and start up. The army of old men begins their peregrinations. Bent bodies wrapped in dirty cloaks, grizzled pates in white head scarves, they begin their day of prayers. They shake a handful of coins in the open taxi door, intoning a blessing. They poke their heads into cafes and chant. The proper response is something like, “God bless you; thank you,” and they grudgingly retreat. But most of the crowd is occupied with their cell phones. Prayers are wasted. Modern life has swept us along in its tide. God knows, we may live behind mud walls and under corrugated iron, but our pockets bulge with “mobiles”, as they’re called -- even if the technology hasn’t quite kept up. They look nice; they ring all right. It’s just that nine times out of ten there’s no one on the other end. “Hello! Hello!” the mobile owner shouts. “Hello! Hello!” he shouts a half dozen times in case the solar flare passes. It rings again. “Hello! Hello!” he shouts and shrugs. The fashionable café becomes like a pond at twilight. A tree frog peeps, “Auld Lang Syne,” or the “Marseilles,” and the bullfrog answers, “Hello! Hello!” and across the still waters, there’s a reply, “Hello! Hello!” The refrain catches, and they croak from all parts, “Hello! Hello!” That’s how it is in the big city.

There’s the problem of faranj hair. I thought I had resolved that one with Mimi, my discovery last month. She was a haircut the way it should be done, the way I remember service in the Middle East, but with a woman’s hands. I was smitten: an hour in the chair, plied with tea and American videos, delicate fingers turning your chin and clipping so carefully, attentively. She gives you a shave and washes your face, and closes the ceremony with a shoulder massage. I counted the days to my next cut. And it was everything I hoped for, everything except the cut itself. One doesn’t mind as it’s happening, as they pour your tea, and one young lady stirs it, and another squeezes lemon in. One doesn’t mind during the scalp massage. But afterward, one faces the cold truth. Mimi isn’t all you thought she was. The next day, you go to an old man, sure he’ll understand. And he does, with sharper clarity than you were ready for. He sits you down and sets the razor only once. He has the barber’s touch; he’s gentle, but ruthless. Off it goes. Snip, snip; he clips ear hair, eyebrows. You haven’t been this hairless in years. He washes your face, and he brushes you off with a huge multi-colored feather duster. There you are, out the door in ten minutes, in shock and feeling naked. Later, you study your skull. It’s been a long time since you’ve seen the shape of it like this. You wonder if there are phrenologists in Ethiopia. This would be the perfect opportunity. You also see like never before how high your high line has receded over the years. Everyone says you look younger. You know better. The pretty barista says you’re konjo (good-looking,) and you’re tempted to believe her, until she explains that your face is wofram (fat) now.

It’s not the best timing to go bald. The weather is inexorably rounding that corner toward what the Ethiopians call winter – the rainy season. Clouds are starting to linger overhead. The temperature is dropping, until one hesitates before one’s early morning cold shower. In a few days, it’ll be Sunny, the Ethiopian equivalent of June, and the rain moves in. The name causes an Abbot and Costello moment between Saba and myself. I say something like, “But June is rainy, right?” “No, it’s Sunny,” etc. Anyway, that’s life in the big city.

Travelogue 16 – May 31
Cannibals and Angels

Around Lake T’ana are a bunch of old churches that are world-famous among those who like such things. By such things, I suppose I mean history and art, and especially when the two meet. You pile into a motor boat off the hotel’s pier, an hour later than planned, per Ethiopian etiquette. You sit next to Saba and a couple guys from Addis on one side, a Swiss couple and a Japanese lady on the other, and you set off across the peaceful waters. It takes a good hour to cross to the Zegae peninsula, stopping by Abay Ras (the beginnings of the Nile) in order to gawk at the glistening backs of some hippos. They oblige us with some horse noises as they spit out water, and I’m reminded that their name means “river horse” in ancient Greek. It takes an hour, and you wonder how far you’ve come. The Swiss couple has a guide book, and you realize by looking at the map you’ve only crossed the little lobe at the bottom of the huge lake.

At the shore, you’re greeted by a horde of kids. They escort you up the wooded path, trying to sell the usual trinkets, plying their English, trying to get your address. This latter is a mystery, unless it’s a long-term investment strategy, thinking that, with years to wear you down, you might finally buy them a visa.

There are three churches on this headland, two within walking distance. One supports a little museum, as well, which is really nothing more than a display in a wooden stable, where you can look over some imperial crowns and crosses and vestments. The churches are generally fourteenth century or so. They all follow a similar floor plan: round, with an open portico around the outside; in the center, the sanctum for priests, and then the passage around it for worship. No tourists enter the sanctum. On the walls of the sanctum and the rafters above are the art, painted by monks and priests way-back-when on cloth and then hung upon the walls. The themes are patterned, as is the style. St. George killing the dragon is always prominent as you walk in, and the doors of the inner sanctum are guarded by two angels, Gabriel and Urael, or maybe Rafael. They are beautiful depictions, colorful, kind of cartoonish, but somber. We follow the life of Jesus in one set of panels. In another, we get gory representations of martyrs. In another, Mary cries over the blue-skinned sinners in hell. Above, the classic Ethiopian cherubs dot the rafters: big-eyed faces with wings attached. In one church, the paintings are fading, but still vivid. In another, locals have executed an awful restoration, in the colors of the Ethiopian flag, and with modern donors joining in the Biblical events. The latter reminds me of Italy, where medieval patrons are attending on Mary’s presentation in the temple, and so forth.

My favorite is the island monastery. The women have to go to their own island, where, unfortunately, the convent was burned down or bombed in recent history, and everything is newly built. On our island, the church hasn’t been restored. The church is ancient, the paintings faded, and it’s wonderful. The pattern of subject matter changes. Archangels glare at you from the columns. Mary and child are painted by Luke himself on one wall! And in the “museum”, aside from the usual crowns and crosses, is a library of medieval manuscripts, which the monk in charge is happy to open and let you touch. Illuminated goatskin, written on in Ge’ez, the forefather of Amharic, and one of the grand old Christian languages, dating back nearly as far as the church itself.

And so, a rather severe old religion carries on. At the gates of every church, you take off your shoes, and I curse my long laces. Saba and the other Abasha cross themselves, bow, and kiss the door frame three times, touching it with their foreheads in between. At the door of the sanctum, they kneel and bow. We pause at the painting on the right hand wall of the sanctum that you see in every church, the story of Belai, I believe his name was: an upright farmer tempted by the devil into cannibalism. Every artist portrays him gnawing with a manic look on the severed teat of his mother. Some residue of piety moves him to pour a drop of water for a Marian hermit, so, towering above this panel of pictures is Mary herself who saves Belai by dropping the shadow of two fingers into the archangel’s balance as the demons at her feet are grasping at the desperate soul of Belai, who is cringing and hanging onto Mary’s cloak.

“You aren’t very religious, are you?” she asks. This young lady would like to take me to a service of the Jehovah’s witnesses. I have to answer no to her question, reflecting that I don’t say yes in my heart, like I might have at an earlier date. There is no one coming to my rescue. Every day they hang on the walls of their churches, I wonder how I go on without my Leeza.

Travelogue #15 – May 29
The Woofs and the Zafs

My landlord gives me looks in the morning now. He has to open the gate to the compound so I can get out. I’m always awake and waiting for him when he emerges in his robe and wrinkled face. I’m not sure how to read it. I might label the expression “mystified”. Last night was a party night. I call it “Meles Day” because I can’t remember the real name. It’s basically a celebration of the victory of the present leaders over the last -- Meles, our prime minister since 1991, over Mengistu, socialist dictator who overthrew the emperor Haile Selasie in 1974. Anyway, maybe it’s just a hangover.

In Bahir Dar, I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to leave my hotel room. I just strolled out my door as light dawned and took a seat on the gorgeous terrace overlooking the lake. The rooms at the Ghion Hotel are in a poor state of repair. The staff are all hustlers, sweet-talking the faranj into one more expensive tour. But the terrace and the garden are beautiful. At dawn, I’m alone on the terrace. The lake is absolutely still and misty. Above in the sprawling warqa tree, an amazing assortment of woofs (birds) hop around. My favorite you can hear growling up there before you see him. He swoops from branch to branch, head bigger than his body. It’s a hornbill – something like the toucan, except less colorful and with an extra ridge on top of its enormous bill. He’s as big as a small dog, and he spends his day picking what I assume are dates from the palms and then coughing them up on another branch. There are parrots and bullhorn geese. And once you start your breakfast, the bright yellow little weavers show up, some alighting right on the table. I’ve mentioned the huge warqa tree. There are two zafs (trees) in Bahir Dar that instantly put you in the Africa mood. This is one. Its limbs spread and twist horizontally from a broad trunk. The leaves are wide and dusty feeling. It took me several days to find out what it is in English, and my information is incomplete. At first, they insisted it was a fig tree, which I knew was false. Then one Frenchie informed me it was a sort of sycamore. A ficus? Pronounced like fig. Anyway, the other tree is the jacaranda, that sometimes blooms in beautiful, scarlet flowers. These trees are not only cultivated on hotel grounds, but can be seen all around town, and even out in the dry hills.

The warqa spreads its limbs wide out in the hills around Tis Abay. That is the name of the waterfall in the Blue Nile that you’ll see displayed in any tourist materials on Ethiopia. The name means “smoke of the Nile,” to describe the effect of the mist from the falls. Sometimes it’s called Tis Isat, or fire smoke. If you’ve seen any pictures of it, they are at least a few years old, because, sad to say, Tis Abay is pretty much a thing of the past. They have just completed the hydroelectricity project that diverts almost all the water of the Nile around the falls. The day we saw it, the whole of the falls was a thin strip of water along a long, rocky cliff that once was roaring water. Still beautiful, but disappointing. You hesitate to complain, knowing the needs of the country have to come first. You just enjoy the hike among the hills, followed by a ragtag bunch of locals, mostly children, who try to sell you bamboo flutes, tepid pop, and calabash water vessels. You climb down to the pool of water underneath the falls, where kids are enthusiastically swimming, and, if you’re not too bright, you jump around the rocks like I did and drop your camera, breaking it open and spoiling most of your shots. It’s a nice little tour, going to Tis Abay. You hike from below to above the falls, crossing the oldest bridge over the Ethiopian Nile below, a vestige of Portuguese presence, and then crossing back in a boat, hoping to catch sight of alligators. You climb back on the tour bus, satisfied despite the anemic falls, and brace for the long ride back along dirt roads.

Back in town, you pass some hours staring at the lake, and then, as sun nears setting, you and Saba take a walk through town. The lanes are crowded. It’s a small enough town that you almost walk the whole perimeter, walking by the tall minarets of the mosque and by the community center blasting music and by the old Italian library, and you stop by the dabbo bet (bread shop) and you pick up a bag of rolls that you pass out among the street children.

Travelogue #14 – May 27
The Tankwa

I’m up at 5:30 again. I take my cold shower before the sunrise. I examine today’s bug bites. Seems like my roommates, the insects, feel entitled to extra portions because I starved them for five days. I was away feeding other bugs. I was up in Bahir Dar, a town northwest, an hour by plane. Its name means “by the sea”, though it’s not by the sea at all. It’s by a lake, Lake T’ana, and since T’ana is the third largest lake in Africa, I suppose the name is acceptable. (Another “third” about Ethiopia: I read yesterday that Addis Ababa is the third highest capital city in the world.)

Bahir Dar is where I got into the habit of 5:30 awakenings. Yesterday, I’m up and out the door at 5:30. I have to meet my tankwa connection. I leave the hotel grounds and walk. I can’t go too fast in my new, green, plastic Captain America sandals. (We called them flip-flops in California. Is that a general term in English? I know here they have a name that’s too long to recall. The more common the item, the more syllables in Amharic. Abstractions get the one- and two-syllable words.) I’ve been wearing them so much here they hurt.

I cut through the church grounds and scramble along the dirt paths through the village of huts behind it. These people farm a plot of land between the church and the next hotel, and they fish. I get to lakeshore, picking my way delicately down the rocky slope. My contact isn’t here yet, so I wait. Sitting on one rock pile are two young guys with blankets over their heads and shoulders, bibles on their knees. One reads aloud. The other is singing mezmur, the Ethiopian hymns. As you walk through the village, you hear similar voices inside the huts.

My connection arrives – Demelesh, a young fisherman. We don’t say much. He knows what I want. He wraps his arms around one of the tankwas leaning against the rock pile and throws it in the water. He tosses in a bundle of papyrus for a seat. I get in, adjusting my balance, careful not to tip over. He hands me the two-headed oar, gives me a push, and I’m off. I glide through the still water, past stones and past the high papyrus that supplies the fishermen with their little boats – the tankwas, made of reeds. The water is profoundly still, as it is every morning. The days here follow an unvarying pattern: still and sunny in the morning, winds from the north and some clouds in the afternoon, then sunny again as the sun sets. I struggle with my paddling technique. The oar is a thick, round branch with paddles nailed on. The fishermen wrap their hands around the top of the branch and paddle side to side. My hands aren’t strong enough to do that. I have to hold it from the bottom, making me slow. But I am steady. After a while, I can develop a flowing movement, side to side, keeping the papyrus point of the boat straight ahead of me. When you see a tankwa from the distance, you see the oar turning like a windmill. I fancy that I look like that from shore. The sun comes over the brown hills in the distance. I stop and sing a mezmur to Helios or to Ra. Actually, I don’t know any mezmur. Not even a prayer. But I’m reverent, and hopefully that’s enough. I row for an hour, past various marshy coves, past another few hotels. Tankwa men shout, “Hello, Mister,” and wave. Several enormous pelicans paddle close behind me, looking for scraps of fish. Egrets fly overhead. I believe I spot an ibis. In one cove, I circle around a lotus flower.

After an hour, I arrive at my destination. There’s one little cove, and another. You see the water encircles an island here. There’s a wooden shack on the island and a yawning man. There’s cactus on the bluffs. You see that the water continues on beyond the island. Ahead there’s another inlet. This water flowing so peacefully inland all collects into one river, beyond sight. This river is the Abay River, the Nile. I’m looking at the beginnings of the Blue Nile, one of the two sources of the great river. The other is Lake Victoria in Uganda, the source of the White Nile. The two Niles join in Khartoum, Sudan. (I saw this from the air, actually -- an impressive sight in the middle of the brown desert below.) I float here a while, soaking in the sun which is rising higher over the hills that recede along the Nile valley. It’s utterly quiet here, except for the subtle lapping of a tankwa’s paddle in the Nile waters. I search the waters for the backs of hippos. On a previous trip -- in a motor boat that time – we saw them, sunning as peacefully as I am now.

I don’t stay long. I know they need the tankwa. On the way back, Demelesh catches up to me. He shows me some of the morning’s catch from his nets. I slip him some birr. I don’t want to give him money in front of his friends in case they become jealous. We stop at another of his nets on the way back. I wait for him while he untangles a bit of it that has knotted around the float, a piece of styrofoam. We row back together. It’s bathing time at lakeside, and a bunch of naked people laugh and wave at me from the rocks. A couple boys dive in and try to catch me. The boat back on shore, I head back to the hotel for breakfast.

Travelogue #13 – May 20
All About the Laughs

“Buon giorno, Mario,” I say. It’s a pleasure to have an Italian acquaintance here. I get to practice a little Italian. And who can’t love the accent? Almost every morning we encounter each other at my café. I think he comes here because it’s the closest thing he can find to an Italian breakfast, which is really just an excuse for a quick infusion of sugar and caffeine. For the brioche, he substitutes cookies. He’s trained them how to make an approximation of a cappuccino. And he’s relaxed enough in thirty years in Africa to even sit down for breakfast. He’s a cheerful fellow, about sixty years-old, tall, healthy, shaven-headed, with bright blue, laughing eyes. He teases the ladies here and kisses them on the cheek -- always in a gentlemanly way. “Where in Italia could a man my age kiss a pretty woman like this?” His theory is that Mussolini meant the women when he cited “natural resources” as the reason for invasion. Mario happens to hale from a town where I spent a few days this winter, and in which I actually set a short scene in Chapter One of Jarvis’ big novel, which I haplessly struggle with every day at this very café. He tells me how the centro of his town has changed. When he was young, everyone wanted to move out into the country. Now their kids are moving back into the centro. Sounds like America. When I ask him about his work, he obliges me with the classic gesture: fingers and thumb together, up, and shake loosely. He shakes his head. That’s all.

Mario is the coolest faranj in Ethiopia. Generally, there’s something in the air that denies us any coolness, any savoir faire. We make an ugly lot. Most of us are old, getting in some last-minute good works. There’s a set of 90s swingers in the bars, long hair and ties, and a contingent of the starry-eyed Birkenstockers. There’s a small middle-aged PC crowd, weary and reclusive. Nothing redeems our pallid self-consciousness on the street. One quickly sees our ugliness through their eyes. Not the jolly Chinese are immune to this effect, nor the intense sari-and-suit Indians, who are buying up all the real estate for their next lives. So it goes.

That’s not to say the Abasha are cool. That quality really doesn’t exist here, except as an anti-matter produced by the faranj. Jaunty maybe. Everything’s natural: the grin and wink of the breast-feeding mother on the street; the laborers piled into the back of the dump truck, singing and clapping; the teenage boys on the sidewalk practicing some dance step they saw on TV; the sullen stare that’s friendly in an instant. You just have to joke. Make everything a joke and you’re fine. Laughter is the currency here. You hear that all the time about Africa. Actually, it gets to be grating. Everyone starts to look a little manic, and playing for laughs gets tiresome. Anything goes. I remember the morning I saw a naked man strolling down the middle of the street, cars streaming around him. As we passed, no one in the taxi batted an eye. The same morning, in a different taxi, we passed an obese women, (unusual itself in Ethiopia,) sitting on a stool on the sidewalk and scrubbing herself. No reaction. But the faranji get a laugh. So it goes.

Sanbat, my little street girl, is coming along. She runs up behind me in her one, midnight blue , felt dress too big for her. She smiles brightly and holds my hand. We are able to hold a little conversation in our second language. How are you? Good, thanks God. What do you want today, I ask? “Dabbo!” she says. Bread. So I pull the little loaf out of my backpack and give it to her. She runs back to her family, which sits together on the same corner every day, looking shamelessly happy. I watched them one day, laughing, clapping to some song the mother was singing. The boy, a toddler, is trying to dance.

Travelogue #12 – May 15
Saturday Morning

The brown, stubbly grass is dotted with blue plastic bags. An inquisitive lam (cow) eyes you, considers following, while the bugs sleep. You hear a baby’s cry and beside the trail you see the VW shell sheltered in grass and the mother peering out. All around it are men sprawled and sleeping. There’s a cluster of aheya (donkeys) looking about as happy as aheya ever do. Two of them have locked onto the back of each other’s necks with their teeth, and they walk in a wide, slow circle together. You stop to watch, but they just continue. The soccer fields are strangely quiet. You scramble down the side of a miniature, red canyon and jump across a stream that looks clean but smells rancid. The grass becomes greener. Some squatters have tended small crops here and there. You pass a haystack and plod over ploughed earth and tiny runnels in high, green grass of water that’s a kind of detergent blue. You stop at the sight of a new bird, sleek and pretty, black and white in sharp divisions on its head and breast, and tan on its back. Three kites watch from their perches on rocks. Behind you a shepherd cracks his whip. The crops get thicker as you go. You have to climb over a makeshift fence of thorns and thistles to get to the road. Along narrow dirt roads you pass small shops and the gates of expensive homes. The walls are embellished with handsome hedges and morning glories. An old man sits behind a table underneath a tent. On his table is a sewing machine that’s at least fifty years old. A man is walking his bug like a lawnmower, holding its back legs. Further, between two high gates, a bug’s head sleeps under a bustling encampment of flies. You’re breaking a sweat. This week, it’s been hot and glaring. The cry of the street vendor seems made of the sunshine. It may be one of the walking mop-and-broom salesmen; they get an early start. Every type of vendor has its distinctive cry. This one is high and nasal. You wonder how they make it all day, like you wonder about the taxi boys who hang out the van windows all day and shout out destinations. It’s quiet again. A boy lazily holds out his hand as you pass. You emerge into the road construction, a big avenue that will lead to the multi-million dollar church they’re building, touting it as the biggest in Africa. Biggest church, you wonder, or biggest Orthodox church? Ethiopia and Egypt have the only large Orthodox communities in Africa. It is big. The three green domes can be spotted from miles away. Relief workers and educators look on it with a dose of bitter irony. Dodging the bulldozer, you cross the packed gravel and climb back onto the intersecting dirt road, where warm silence prevails again. Dogs sleep in the shadows of walls and shopkeepers stare from inside their small, square windows. The alleyway peters out at the edge of one last vacant lot. The busy street is beyond. To your right are the tarara above downtown. Tall summer clouds are accumulating there. You reflect that you left home four months ago today, and all you miss of your former life, aside from the people, are your bicycle and a crisp autumn breeze.

Travelogue #11 – May 13
Till the Lams Come Home

Without expecting it, I was up the tarara (mountain) again. It was the day I was to speak to an agency about partnering with the foundation (see link.) Up and up we drove, toward their office. We drove by the huge, wooded estate, up the side of a steep hillside, that is the French embassy. The embassy gives this neighborhood its name, Farantsay, and some say gives us the term faranj. Looking up the road of this agency’s office, it seems as though you can see the end of town at the base of the tarara. Above are trees and meadows. I’m huffing and puffing again, barely recovered from a cold and suffering from my asthma.

After the meeting, we drive around to a few of their sites. Several of them are right against the green mountainside. I want to run up under the trees; I want to have the breath to run up under the trees. They don’t think twice when I say it’s beautiful. When I mention beauty to the chauffer on the way, he thinks I’m talking about the women – another point of pride among Ethiopians. It’s funny to me how oblivious they seem to be to what I think is beauty. I draw equally blank looks mentioning the tarara as the blue skies or sunsets. I suppose they have plenty of others things to think about, like empty stomachs and what’s in the faranj’s pockets. Even the middle class here is very preoccupied with being middle class – being pioneers, I guess. They buy their houses out in the plain, by my house or in Bole, avoiding the gorgeous foothills because that’s the older part of town and where the poor have congregated. It all works against California law. No Topanga canyon, no mansions in the hills.

We visit three schools. All are projects to which these prospective partners have contributed. They are meant to represent the range of possibility. The poorest is a long, low building of corrugated iron and wood. The children are gathered at desks and are drawing in their workbooks. “What’s that?” I ask. “Saat!” A watch. Okay. Every book has a watch and a house drawn in it, circle and peaked square. Next door is a youth project where they keep young guys occupied converting a dump into a working garden. These guys crowd around us jovially; they want to show me. We have to say next time. The nicest facility we visit was built courtesy of the Italian embassy and then given over to the kebele (district.) It’s got a few concrete buildings and a slide. It accommodates four classes of fifty kids each.

One of the schools is in recess, and the kids rush me on the playground. I have my Bill Clinton moment, reaching into the crowd with both hands. Every one of them has to shake my hand. Some little boys cheat and approach two or three times. I say nothing, especially when I see the astonishment with which they look up at me. The other two kindergartens are in session. When we enter the classrooms, the kids stand and we ask, “How are you, lijjoch (children)?” All in unison, they answer: “We’re fine, thanks to God.” Then the teacher has them show off their English by singing a song or two. One is “Mary had a little lamb,” I think, though it’s a bit garbled. This must be a confusing ditty for them, as lam means cow, and little girls really don’t tend cattle. They chant another song and dance to it, bobbing back and forth. One class recites the alphabet in a deafening chorus. It’s overwhelming. The kids are much too cute. They gape at me with such wonder. I’m sold on the mission here. If I could, I would transport all donors and volunteers to one classroom.

Leaving, I make my guide promise we’ll come back and hike a bit. He glances back at the tarara and shrugs. Sure, why not?

Birdwatch: I almost stepped on a little mouse of a bird the other day in my field. It’s the color of a mouse along its back, but underneath it’s a bright turquoise, and on its cheek is a patch of vermilion. Beautiful little bird, and fearless. It barely hopped out from under my foot, and then it continued to peck in the dirt while I loomed overhead, watching. Other little finches? We’ve got them: red ones, yellow ones.

Travelogue #10 – May 8
Tarara
I’ve neglected to report about a trip to Entoto a week ago, preferring, I suppose, trivialities, that being the make-up of my character. Entoto is a mountain above Addis Ababa where the emperor Menelik first settled in the 1870s & 80s. Still standing is the Maryam church, which he built, and which his wife later renovated and expanded. And you can also still visit his palace.

Entoto is a long way up. It doesn’t seem like it from below. It looks like a hike of an hour or two. No, it’s a series of grinding taxi rides, first to the northern edge of town and into the neighborhoods that climb the foothills. Then one waits a good long while at the base of the mountain for the last taxi to fill up. This is one of those that is a pickup with a shell over the back. You sit on one of two benches on top of the wheel well. The driver won’t depart until he has six people per side. That is a serious squeeze. People trickle in from other taxis or buses. My friend and I sit and chat with a father and his baby daughter who are both going to see Entoto for the first time. “I’ve lived in Addis all my life and never made it,” the father says. The little girl is all dressed up in her traditional garments, like linen pajamas. Eventually, enough people cram in, and we roll. The last one in pulls the back door shut and sits on the little steel shelf screwed to the door. Seems a tenuous hold on life, especially going uphill.

We take a long series of hairpin turns, biodiversity strangely perishing as we go. There is literally nothing on this mountain but eucalyptus, and green grass between wide gullies of red earth. You pass old women trudging down the hill with bundles of eucalyptus branches strapped horizontally to their backs, and the occasional donkey doing the same work.

Up top, I can barely breathe. That’s been an issue for me in Ethiopia, with my asthma-wracked respiratory system. Addis is about two thousand meters above sea level already. Even by the time I’m at the bottom of the hill, I’m short of breath. A runner passes and stops at the shop by the taxi stand. I’m in awe. I ask him if he’s going to Athens. He just sneers. I worship him all the more. Only the good ones sneer.

The church is a traditional structure, octagonal or so in design, with pretty, carved eaves. We don’t enter. Instead, we’re shuffled into a small museum, where a guide attempts explanation in English. There are pictures, crowns, and garments of the great king. He had an intriguing face, humble and frank, it seems to me. He’s the guy who beat the Italians the first time around. We see the gun he shot at them. Behind the church, we see his “palace”. That consists of three or four structures with mud walls and thatched roof. His residence is the most modest of them all, two rooms, basically. The hall where he eats with international guests is the biggest. That makes sense to me, Ethiopians even today being delighted with their cuisine. It’s the one consistent line of questions a visitor will receive: how do you like the food? And then, you’ll have to respond about each of the major dishes. From his residence, a window opens out over the wide plain. It’s said he ruled from this window. You can believe it from the view. Below lies just about the whole city of Addis Ababa. Wheezing horribly, I pick out my neighborhood, out in the flattest and furthest plain, by the airport. And then I sit on a tree root.

On the way out, the daddy and girl catch up to us. He wants to walk down with us. I pretend to be enthusiastic. We make it about a quarter mile, look for a few photo vantages, and turn back. The knees ache on such a steep hill, and seeing one’s home town in miniature like that is daunting. We turn back for the taxis. I would rather have headed for the meadows on neighboring tarara (mountains) myself, but that’ll be another time. It looks like I’ll have opportunities, if plans on the school work out in the direction they’re headed. Next installment …

Travelogue #9 – May 6, 2004
Sarg, the Sequel
It seems that two days after a sarg (wedding,) the couple is invited, along with many guests, to the bride’s family’s house. The original purpose was to offer a chance for the dissatisfied groom to return her. Now, it’s a big banquet and party. My Protestant friend, Samson, invited me to the Mals, as it’s called, (I’m familiar with that word as meaning change, like from a dollar,) of his sister. I was already coming down with this cold and should have declined, but I forgot how these events unfold, and he was insistent. Sure enough, we met at five, and the couple didn’t show until after eight. The “hall” looked to be canvas thrown over the courtyard between two rows of small houses, one of which was Samson’s. Rows of unendurable, metal folding chairs were tightly packed into a bit of slanting concrete, so that one buttock suffered more than the other, unless you leaned into the shoulder of your neighbor. My neighbor didn’t mind. He was a friend of Samson’s and fondled me all evening. Who am I to complain? I haven’t had that kind of intimacy in a while. Few of my girlfriends have been so publicly affectionate, gripping my inner thigh as the show gets going. When they finally arrived, we stood and awaited their entrance while the video crew enacted their elaborate rituals, blinding us all with sweeps of halogen. They enter. The couple wears black gowns embroidered with gold patterns, and she wears a diadem. Led before them is the unfortunate bug who will provide the main course. I recall that I’d already passed this hall on a walk earlier that same day, and I had noticed a bull’s hide stretched out on the grass, its head laid ignominiously beside the path. He had a kind of bored and sleepy expression, this bull, and looked as though he might have been buried there like a kid in the sand at the beach. Anyway, couple and attendants take their seat on a small dais festooned with Christmas lights. My new friend is squeezing me with renewed ardor. I’m just waiting for the tajj bottles to be opened. (That’s the honey mead.) Maybe the bug is offering resistance backstage. We sit and sit. Eventually, they allow the bottles to be opened, primarily out of pity for me, I think. I’ve got a good glassful down and have an arm around my buddy when they start calling us back for food. I’m the only faranj, so I follow right after the dignitaries. There’s quite a spread. I think Samson said forty dishes. I take a good sample, passing with good humor the raw meat, which Ethiopians love. They all smile. Things liven up once we’ve eaten. Some guests begin to break out into skista while the couple endures an endless series of poses in front of the cameramen. The guests drag the faranj up for amusement. I do my best skista, but it’s crowded and I’m weary. They enjoy it anyway. I’m having a nice time trying to talk to the old ladies next to me. They’re shy with me; they have beautiful smiles. I try to coax them into drinking tajj. No, no. Their husbands grin drunkenly from across the table. It’s verging on ten, and my friend says it’s time to go. He escorts me most of the way home, massaging my hand in his as he talks about marriage. “You’re not married? Girlfriend? No?” He’s shocked, and lectures me about this. I try to take cover behind my advanced age. It won’t work. Watat, he repeats. Young. And the discourse continues thus, in pigeon Amharic, a discourse to the effect of “a man needs a maid,” and he pats my genitals occasionally to highlight his argument. I agree and agree. He eventually brings up the widow, and I smell a conspiracy. She’s beautiful. She’s alone. And she didn’t make it to the Mals. He says she’s fasting and shrugs. He’s as Christian as she is and doesn’t know why she’s fasting. That’s frightening, someone who fasts even more than necessary in Ethiopia. A man needs a maid. He tells me about how he and his wife do it every night and he massages my palm with extra vigor. I’m able to pry myself loose at last, and I make my exit, wandering down the pitch black lanes to my house. My head throbs, my throat is raw, and I feel a bit molested. But it was worth going to see pretty women skista. One of them reminded me of Leeza. The next day, they laugh at my hangover and advanced cold at Sami’s café. He tells me that in a few more nights, the families gather at the bridegroom’s family’s house for something called Kelekel. I think I’ll have to pass.

Travelogue #8 – May 4
Fields of Trash

Dalul touches my face. Dalul is Leeza’s brother. He’s fourteen and curious. He often stares at me with his wide, brown eyes and touches my skin and my hair. He finds the faranj an intriguing phenomenon. He’s a gentle, quiet boy, crazy about soccer, not so good in school, respectful of his mother. He takes my hand when we walk together, which is not an uncommon thing among men here. Today he touches in order to watch the white spot it leaves on my red forehead. I’ve been irresponsible with my sunshine this weekend. I can’t help it. I can’t resist the sun, and I can’t resist my new pleasure: strolling through the fields that lie between Gurgi and Bole. Gurgi is my neighborhood. South of it lies the airport, and east from the airport gates runs Bole Road, along both sides of which lies the fashionable Bole district. There are nice outdoor cafes there, and, more importantly, the fields lie behind the new buildings and around the airport. They were probably pretty before all the trash collected, and before the quarry and the construction. But they are green, by and large, and I can be alone for minutes at a time without being badgered. The clusters of trees are pretty. The big clouds that drift overhead make for handsome skies. The mountains in the distance are alluring. And the life drawn to the fields is diverse and interesting. First of all, the myriad heaps of trash draw some of the city’s more notorious birds. There are the brown kites that circle and that dot the treetops. There are the white-breasted crows that sound like dying car horns when they call. There are the remarkably ugly buzzards, with their pointy white heads that look like skulls. They are huge and ungainly and prefer to gallop away from you than to fly. Then there are some odd, pelican-like birds with long bills with which they root through the garbage. I believe these are ibises. There are people encamped here and there, some just napping, others who have built shelters. There are the small herds of bugs and cattle brought here to graze, oblivious to the skulls and leg bones of their cousins who have made meals for the local humans. There are the soccer players on their ad hoc fields, running and shouting. Between one field and another there is a cluster of huts like a village. There, a group of giggling mothers with kids on their backs engulfs me, their hands out for birr (the currency.) They don’t see many faranj in these parts. I tease them by asking them for money. It sounds cruel, but they get a kick out of it. I have to amuse myself somehow; it gets tiresome being the walking gunzeb. Beyond the village are the fields apparently designated by the community as athletic. The soccer fields are cleaner, the players better. Runners circle the lot of them. Bugs and cows watch the games with me. Walk beyond that, and you arrive at the Orthodox revival tent, where a priest is almost always preaching across the loudspeaker. He stands in front, in his long gown and flat-topped cap, colleagues sitting in a line beside him in folding chairs. Those spooky figures in white are gathered on the small hilltops. A circle of kids and mothers in white cloaks sings hymns. They smile or stare as I pass, but, notably, no one raises a cupped hand for handouts. Past that, I re-enter the city streets, in Gurgi. I should mention that it’s on this walk that I met Sanbat. She’s about eight, a pretty little girl with a sunny smile. Her head is shaved and she wears the dark rags that signal that she’s a street child. She spots me as I pass and runs to catch me. I grab her and ask if she’s my gwadenya, my friend. It took me a while to figure out that she speaks about as much Amharic as I do. I think she’s from a region in the north called Tigrae. She walks with me, cajoling me for some gift. When we first met, I was carrying leftover fries from a café in Bole. Of course, I gave them to her for her and her family. Since then, I try to carry a bit of dabbo (bread) with me in case I run into her. They say about ten percent of the city’s kids live on the street. Even if they have shelter, they beg for their families. It’s a precarious existence, especially for girls, who are often abducted.

Travelogue #7 –April 29
This My God

I find myself in the position of employer here, (see Tesfa Foundation link,) the unemployed employer. I’ve conducted three preliminary interviews with teachers so far, and learned nothing. The usual exchange goes like this: “Where do you see yourself in five years?” A blank look, and, “Only God knows.” All right. I tell them about the foundation and why they should be excited. More blank looks. Are you interested? A wan smile and a nod. Okay. It was great talking to you.

I try to provoke a little English, but they’re shy. The first one brought her husband, who, I learned, speaks English very well, and has his own school. The second one teaches already for the same wage I’m offering. I asked how she feels about that. Apparently, she feels nothing. I ask if she needs more money. What follows is a long discussion in rough English about transportation costs. I ask if she has a minimum she needs to make. She starts in about the taxis, and about the work she couldn’t do at night because of the commute. “A number,” I say. The third seems most interesting, but I’ll just have to guess at her interest. She does manage to say she likes kids. Anyway, we’ll have another round of interviews with some of my Abasha (Ethiopian) committee members, who can read the body language, or God language.

God is a persistent presence here. When you make a plan, it’s “God willing.” That’s “insh’Allah,” if your friend is Muslim. It’s kind of nice, unless you’re in an anxious mood. “Yes or no?” -- “God willing.” Well, I guess I should have just talked to Him.

I’ve made friends with some Protestants. They’ve taken me under their wing at my breakfast café, where I start the day with fresh papaya juice. The Protestants have made great headway here in Meles’ reign, much to the chagrin of the Orthodox, who feel this is their country. Muslims are one thing, but Protestants. Generally, I side with the Orthodox – it’s my affection for tradition. But these particular Protestants are very nice. Only once has the owner of the café, Samson, asked me, “Have you had a personal experience of salvation through Jesus?” or some such thing. It’s a great question, because there’s absolutely no way to answer it. I think born-agains have been tutored with the writings some ancient, arcane Surrealist. It’s like asking someone if he slipped through the wormhole downtown this morning. I'm not really sure. How would one tell? I'll venture a no, since I feel about the same as I did this morning.

"Ooo, I like this my God," one of these new friends says. "Everything. Everything because of Him. I say thanks God and pray." She's the widow who owns the building that houses Sami's café. On her dresser is a photo of her husband who died young. She is young and pretty, and has two bright, English-speaking kids who delight in parading before me everything they know about science and geography. The daughter wants to be the first woman politician in Ethiopia. She admires Condoleeza-Rice. I'm not sure how to respond to that one, but decide it's best to leave a kid her fantasies. The children are eager to go to America, and I'm instantly alert to the danger of picking up another fiancée. "Ooo, I like this my God," she says with a beautiful smile, and I might even be close to a personal experience with the Surrealist Jesus, because there is such a beautiful lilt to the Ethiopian accent. It's native to their language. It rises and tumbles in pitch musically, and at times the sound of women chatting sounds to me like birdsong.

"Any time, you come. Here is family. Me, my daughters, (even though she has a boy and a girl,) any time you come." We're sitting on their narrow terrace between her house and the building she rents out. Stars are appearing, and little David announces proudly there are two of them, and tells me how you can tell one is a planet. With an emphatic wave of her hand, she repeats, "Any time, you come," and the first A of any is a long, high note.

Travelogue #6 – April 25
Body Parts

It’s been one of those days. The power’s down at my café, so I can’t get on the computer to do any work. Okay. I have a coffee and head home again. A weak and sad-looking boy lingers at the taxi-van’s door, giving me the gunzeb look. (Gunzeb is money.) I’m used to that, but he’s particularly down and out, his clothes rags, and his eyes and nose oozing yellow stuff. I toss him a coin. He’s too weak to lift his arms and catch. He searches the ground in a dazed fashion. Beside the van, in the sun, a man sits on his little rug, holding up his stump of a leg for passers-by. The sidewalks of major roads are a showcase for every misfortune, especially around the regular taxi stops. You’ll see every type of physical deformity and loss. Men will wave their handless stumps of arms at you through the window. Men with withered legs, swollen and pussy ones, with bodies twisted like pretzels, all will plant themselves in the sidewalks. I haven’t asked anyone yet why there are so many amputees here, but I assume it’s the war(s) with Eritrea. Army ‘recruiters’ would roam and pick up boys of nearly any age to take them to the front. The families would hear nothing for years from the boy who disappeared one day.

I walk home from the taxi stand, passing by a vacant lot where the boys have improvised soccer fields. The crumpled corpse of a donkey lies next to it, and has for a while. It’s been slow to deteriorate, this one. There’s a bull’s head that lies along another route of mine that was bone within a week, except for a patch of black on top like a toupee. I begin to monitor such things out of curiosity.

The animals here have it tough. I’ve written about the bugs, and the poor chickens, who seem to spend half their lives hanging upside down from human hands. Farm animals really travel in this town. The bulls get around, too. They are perpetually being driven, with wide, confused eyes, along major roads. I’ve seen them milling around in the middle of the highway, being badgered by stray dogs. The donkeys are worked mercilessly. They run back and forth loaded to the sky. My route in the morning passes a field where the donkey herders gather in the morning. The beasts look so haggard. The herdsmen hobble them by twisting one leg back and tying it tightly with twine to the upper part of the leg. Or they tie two guys together, so tightly you can see the twine biting into the skin. I’ve seen severed donkey hooves in that field and wondered if the limb died from lack of circulation. The cats I’ve seen are pathetically thin and mangy. They run from humans because humans usually throw things at them.

I go for lunch. It’s been beautiful out this week. I think rainy season #1 has passed. I sit outside, but of course, that’s an invitation to all passing kids. One little girl in her tattered blanket has an eloquently suffering face. She stands and watches me eat. Once she’s given up, I run to the bathroom in the middle of my meal, suddenly assaulted by the old stomach bug. The toilet doesn’t work so well; it’s full of previous contributions. I return and finish my lunch. One becomes inured to many sensory cues here.

On the walk home, hands and sad smiles accompany me. “Money!” Even men in dress clothes will stop to tell me they’re hungry. I can see why most faranj have cars and travel from home compound to work compound to the hotel restaurant or bar, most likely all in Bole, the wealthy part of town. But not all hands are held out for money. On the last street before my own, there are a group of girls who stop their play and run toward me. “How are you?” they shout. I have to shake their hands, and they walk with me the length of their street. At the next corner, the boys kick their flat soccer ball to me, and I have to play for a few minutes.

And there are the gorgeous skies as consolation. I’ve figured out the general plan of the town, by watching the sun and stars, not by ever seeing a map. It seems the town runs mostly west to east. The “Hollywood Hills”, as I’ve termed them, run along the north side, and curve south, so that the other side of town climbs them. To the south are the arid plains and far mountains of Nevada. I live on the east side, and from some vantage points can see all the way west. Piassa, the nearest thing to downtown, is a cluster of recognizable buildings and roofs rising from one wooded hillside

Travelogue #5 – April 19
Sarg Season

The rainy season prelims continue. In the morning, I battle the bimbi (mosquitoes) in the shower. I inflict great casualties, but there are always more. On the road, my shoes stick in the mud. But the sky clears for the majority of the day now, and gets muggy while great clouds drift slowly overhead.

Fortunately for all the young couples in town, the weekend was relatively sunny. It’s sarg season. That means wedding. Easter is over, so it’s time to get the weddings in, before the next fast. They work hard for their salvation in this country. I believe half the days of the year end up being fast days, if you dare count them. And even if you’re Muslim, many of your guests will be Christian, & counting down till the next fast. So on Sunday, I counted five wedding processions down Haile Gebreselasie while I worked. They’re not much different than American processions, several decorated cars leading a line of bored attendees. But here, in front of them all is a pickup with a video camera man in the back.

The video man has taken pre-eminence over the priest here. Every move is orchestrated. I myself went to a sarg Saturday night, my second in Ethiopia. The first was that of Leeza’s cousin, Abebaw, during my first stay in Addis, in January. That happens to be one of the other main sarg seasons, being a hiatus of several weeks from good Christian hunger. Abebaw’s was a classier affair than Saturday’s. Saturday’s took place in a part of town, Kasanchis, that isn’t known for class. Its main streets are crowded with the kind of bars I mentioned in an earlier log, with the ladies in the back.

The houses are modest. But here there is a community hall that rents to wedding parties, and they managed to make it very nice. We gathered on either side of the hall in folding chairs and waited, because I guess that’s what guests do, wait and sweat. The wedding party showed up an hour late, preceded by the video crew, of course. They march in in specific order, sweating under the relentless lights of the crew, and take their places on a kind of dais. The couple sits in high thrones. What follows is an hour or so of well-choreographed poses, broken by a bit of eating and a bit of dancing.

I downed my tajj, the honey mead that is one of the national drinks, (and very good,) and waited to dance. I like the Ethiopian dances. Each ethnic group seems to have contributed one special step to the repertoire. Predominant as the Amara race is in Ethiopia, so is their dance, the skista. Some of you have seen it already. It consists mostly of a rhythmic movement of the shoulders. Apparently, I’m pretty damned good at it for a faranj. I think I may have initiated a courtship with one of the wedding party because I squared off with her in the skista. We’ll see. But my specialty is the dance of the Garagae, a group from the west or southwest. It’s more fun, I think, and a great workout. It’s kind of like the running, kicking, 80s New Wave style. I wowed the crowd with my Duran-Duran moves. But I couldn’t keep it up too long in the steam bath. I went in search, fruitlessly, for more tajj. It was all over too quickly. The last ritual was the cake-cutting. The couple mounts a series of steps to reach the multi-level cake, and perform a series of postures dictated by the video director, eventually pouring the champagne and waving some sparklers. By this time, the neighborhood kids had pushed their way in, and the scene deteriorated into a free-for-all for the food. The wedding party did their best to exit with dignity, going on to the groom’s or the bride’s family’s house for more celebration.

I go drunkenly home to my quiet little house and pull out the Amharic book to review vocabulary. I think I’m making progress, helped along by some unfortunate correspondences between Amharic words and ours. Amharic for “morning” is an unmentionable name for part of the female anatomy. The word for love, sadly, is rather close to an English obscenity. The word for “husband” is bal. Maybe there’s some mystical significance behind it all. My favorite word so far is chinikinik, which means crowded.

Travelogue #4: April 12, 2004
The Bugs

It’s the day after Easter and I’m sitting at an outdoor table at my internet café, writing. I’m relieved to see a boy driving a herd of sheep by. I was afraid they’d be wiped out after this holiday. The Amharic word for sheep, by the way, is bug -- it takes a little getting used to. The day before Easter should be called Bug Saturday. They’re everywhere, poor creatures helplessly bleating from the roofs of taxis, or inside, on the floor, feet roped together. They know what’s in store. The next day, everyone is full and sleepy, and the bugs are reduced to piles of skins that are littered here and there. Next door to Melesech’s house, a bug carcass is hanging from a rafter, blue bag of guts hanging out. But, anyway, some bugs have survived the holocaust to propagate.

Saturday night, I made it into a church to watch the goings-on, escorted by a friend I made at the hotel. I showed up at the church gates at 10 pm. The worship goes on until 3 am, when everyone rushes home to break the fast with some bug and doro wot. It’s a little spooky. There are figures in white gowns swarming from all sides in the darkness. Beggars and kids and small merchants hang out in front of the gates. Inside the gates, the ghostly worshippers are sitting, standing, sleeping, all around the outside of the church. It’s an octagonal building lit up like a Christmas tree. The brothers of this friend lead me in the doors. It’s choked with worshippers walking in slow circles around the inner sanctum. They’re holding candles high. It’s the “thanksgiving” part of the program, they tell me. It’s hot and packed, and the air is thick with incense. When we pass through the women’s side of the church, they stand at either side and hand us candles. Only men are circling. They are all delighted to see the faranj. We stop after a while, and the prayers start. Someone recites through a loudspeaker. The crowd sings back with something else. After a time, that’s over, and everyone finds a place to sit for a while. I know later the mezmer will start, traditional music and a beautiful ritual dance in which two lines of monks or religious students face each other and take a slow series of steps forward and back, accompanied by a lifting of their canes. It’s hypnotizing. I’d like to stay, but I’m fading.

So now, it’s all over and life is back to normal. The bugs run by, and the occasional hump-backed brahma bull. Once in a while, you’ll see the shepherds who run along with their herds for miles and miles, whipping their animals. These are the cousins of Ethiopia's famous marathoners. The beggars wander by, the destitute old men, the boys in green cloaks and short pants selling lottery tickets. And when I get up to go myself, the shoe-shine boys whistle as I go by and call out, “Hello.” There’s one boy who shouts out, “I love you,” whenever he sees me, and it’s delivered with such intensity, I’m not sure what to tell him. I’ve decided to be loyal to one little boy who’s just skin and bones and the same rags for clothes that hang off him every day. He has a sweet smile and scrubs my shoes very earnestly. The operators of this café call him to do errands for them and he’s always happy to help.

Many kids are happy to help here. If you walk along this stretch of road with bags, you’ll end up in a tug-of-war with knee-highs who want some change for helping. The mothers sitting on the ground with their babies appeal to me, “Father. Eat, eat.” And everyone else laughs to see me. It’s every adolescent’s nightmare, walking down the street and being the subject of endless mirth. The boys especially really get a kick out of the faranj. You get used to it. It could be worse.

April 13: I spent the first night in my new place. The first house didn’t work out. I had to defer to the local foundation committee, who felt I was wasting money. Now I’m in two rooms in a nice family’s compound. As near as I can tell, (I still can’t find a map to this town,) I’m at the southeastern edge of town, a couple taxi rides away from Piassa, which is the nearest thing to a downtown, and where Leeza’s family lives. It’s a nice, quiet place, it seems, and no bugs, (of either sort.) But with morning comes the real test: a cold shower in the concrete outhouse. It’s kind of fun, like camping. But I cheat. I don’t get right under the water. Afterward, it’s out to my little street that can’t be called muddy with justice. Slimy might be a better word. So much for my Italian shoes.

Travelogue #3 – April 8
Are You Dana?

I’m content: the gathering clouds of the morning broke. That means a little bit of sun. Since I left home almost three months ago, I’ve seen about three sunny days. Everywhere I go, the rain follows. I challenged my Ethiopian friends here, “I thought you said the rainy season is June and July.” They consider and say there really are two rainy seasons. The first builds up to the second, overlapping neatly to cover about all my time here. The rain here gets pretty heavy, leaving a muddy mess everywhere. No one is too bothered by it, though. Easter approaches.

Tomorrow is Good Friday. People are smiling and bustling. Christians get to break their fifty day fast on Easter with lots of meat and buttery sauces, all the animal products they’ve had to forego. You see men and women making their way home with fat chickens under their arms, or swinging by their feet. These will be slaughtered for the famous delicacy doro wot. You see men following behind old women with heavy bags of grain on their backs. In yards or on the street in front of shops, old women squat over flat baskets of corn or grains that they’re preparing for Sunday.

The churches seem busier than usual. They’re a sight in any season, surrounded by dense crowds. Music is broadcast from within. Beggars sit at the gates and doorways. People dressed in the traditional white veils kneel in the yard praying toward the church. People stop to kiss the gateway. Tomorrow I’ll go to watch some of the ceremony in Giorgis, one of the bigger churches. Christians pray all day on Good Friday, asking forgiveness for what happened to poor Jesus.

Today was a happy day for me for another reason. I had a normal bowel movement. For a good week or so, I’ve been suffering from what I call Menelik’s Revenge. Menelik was Emperor late in the last century, the strong man who beat off the Italians. It was his wife, by the way, who pointed the way to what would become the site of the new capital, Addis Ababa.

I don’t know if it was the tomatoes, the milk in my macchiattos, the butter in the sauces I’ve eaten. I thought I was being careful. But suddenly, elimination became an adventure. At least it never comes unannounced. It’s time to look for a bathroom when I’m seized with an explosive pain in my gut. Public bathrooms, as I’ve noted before, are a little scary. I’ve come to appreciate the squatters. Something about that position makes it all a little quicker and cleaner. And no bathroom has paper. You think I would have learned my lesson in Eastern Europe, where toilet paper is a hot commodity. No wonder there are legions of little kids selling tissue paper on the streets here. About twelve cents a packet. It’s a good business selling to faranj, I’m sure.

Anyway, I think this is a good segue into a subject that Sue wanted me to address, the smells of Addis. Two smells are prevalent. The first is that which issues from the bathrooms and sewers, and is wafted about by the gentle breezes of this town. The other is exhaust from the crowded streets. But underneath these is a very distinct scent that characterizes this place. You smell it as soon as you leave the airport, and any time the man-made smells clear. And it seems to me it’s in the food, too. I don’t know how to describe it. But it makes me think of the red soil here. When I first came to Ethiopia, it reminded me strongly of when I was in southern Egypt. Since one source of the Nile is not too far away, maybe it makes sense to say it’s in the soil. It’s a very evocative scent. I like it.

And I’d say Ethiopia likes me. They sing my name in the streets. In Amharic, the predominant language, dehna means fine or well. In everyday pronunciation, it sounds a lot like my name. Since greetings revolve around a repeated questioning after someone’s health, I start to feel very special. “Are you Dana?” they ask. “I’m Dana, Thank God.” “Are you Dana?” “Thank God, I’m Dana. Your family, are they Dana?” I enjoy it.

Travelogue #2 … 4-4-04
Local Time

It’s ihud, Sunday. I’m up early, with the many roosters that strut around the neighborhood, and with the churchgoers. Churches here are as fond of the loudspeaker as the mosques. My new house is peaceful, though I can hear the landlord’s servants starting their day. The landlord and family live behind the house in a smaller structure. I’ve taken the lime green bedroom as mine. I affectionately call it the silverfish room. The sow bugs and gnats have claimed the bathroom, cockroaches the kitchen, and flies the other bedroom. So far only the big living room is unclaimed. That’s where the kids will meet some day, hopefully.

Outside, the streets are relatively quiet and almost everyone is wearing the traditional white cloth over their heads in honor of the holy day. Next week will be Fasika, or Easter. There should be lots of great ceremony to witness. Easter here and Easter home are the same day this year. That's unusual. Everything about time is different in Ethiopia: hours, days, years. The clock is six hours off, so 12 for them is associated with dawn and dusk, as opposed to midday and night. Days and years lag behind ours because they use the Julian calendar. When I signed a lease on the last day of March, their date read 7-22-96.

I navigate the ankle-breaking stone street I live on, to the mud road, to the asphalt one, on to Haile Gebreselassie Street. I should mention that this street is named for a marathon runner. You’ve got to love a country that makes a national hero of a marathon runner. His picture is everywhere. He’s rich, and owns several of the nicer buildings in this area. For you track and field fans, I should inform you there’s a new kid on the block: Kananisa. He’s already broken one of HG’s records. A local joke says that HG walks in on his wife with someone else. This man jumps out the window before he can see who it is. But HG jumps out after him and chases him. 26 miles later, when he hasn’t caught him, he knows it can only be Kananisa.

Anyway, the view is nice along the boulevard. It’s a city in the mountains, as I’ve said. It rises as it spreads itself over the hills. If you look one way, it’s down into a brown valley and distant hills. The other way is up into closer, greener hills. One way is Nevada, and the other is Hollywood. Nature note: the doves have orange eyes and orange in the feathers of their wing tips. One hangs out on the electric wires over our concrete front yard, where the landlord’s servants grind up leaves and grains and peppers and leave them to dry, and it waits until no one is around to swoop down.